The boeuf bourguignon was really good, and I have a lot of wine left over to console myself with later tonight if Ian doesn&#039t come home. Hell, I&#039ll drink it anyway. It has been a while since I&#039ve had any wine, after all. And after the hell that has been this week, I think I need/deserve it.

The pommes de terre au gratin were likewise good. I&#039m not going into any detail about how frustrating it was to get all of that done and then into the van to get it on campus for the dinner. Just remembering it annoys me all over again. So let&#039s just say it was frustrating, but tasty.

At the dinner, I wasn&#039t feeling overly social, but I found myself slipping back into the old Erin Ringwald mode where I&#039m a highly functioning depressed person. Social, sort of bubbly, obtusely avoiding everything that is bothering me so I can force myself with gritted teeth through a social event. I chatted with a number of people and ate a lot of food, but by the end of the evening, all the weight from this week&#039s relapse came crashing down on me and I couldn&#039t keep up the fake energy anymore.

Glumly, I helped Tony bring everything back up to the department from the HMSU, and rather than leave like I intended (to go home and mope/write bad poetry/sleep/whatever), I ended up hanging out while he washed some dishes and checked his e-mail. I don&#039t know what made me start talking–Tony and I have never really gotten deep into my personal problems beyond joking about my phobias–but I found myself asking a few questions about my future thesis. Of course, talking about my future thesis just reminded me about how far behind I am with it and how I&#039m failing Tony by not keeping up with the schedule he&#039s setting for me. Deeper funk, and in trying to explain that away, I mentioned that this week has been hard, and he, of course, was curious. So I vaguely started about how this week hasn&#039t been great for me phobia-wise, and that I&#039m sort of relapsing into depression, but I don&#039t know how long this will last because I may just snap out of it next week.

Thus began the counseling with Tony. It was late, like 9:30 or 10 even, but he sat there with me trying to figure out what I was saying. He couldn&#039t understand the depression, and I could tell that he could never understand because he never experienced anything like I was describing. But he listened and talked (mostly talked) and threw out ideas and suggestions to help me remember my old coping mechanisms for when I was depressed all the time and hurting and wanting to hurt myself. I didn&#039t tell him specifically what the problem was, figuring that I&#039d said too much already by expressing that I was depressed and that phobias/nightmares induced it. Regardless, he was on-line looking up books, he was telling me to write things down, and he even got out a folder and wrote down my homework assignment for next week to e-mail to him: reflecting on and writing down a list of coping mechanisms to help me remember what I forgot from years ago.

It wasn&#039t until after we had left the department and he had driven away that I realized the very first coping mechanism that I had somehow forgotten (at least consciously): talking. I realized that once we stopped talking, I began sinking again deeper into the funk. While we were talking, I was forced to focus my thoughts, organize them in order to express them to him, and it helped. I had rather forgotten most of my therapy because things had been so hunky-dory for a time, and I realized that talking to Tony was like therapy only he&#039s funnier and speaks French. So he gave me my homework assignment and I worked on it when I got home and will e-mail it to him by the due date next week. I&#039m just grateful to have such a great friend who is there regardless of how much or how little he understands what I&#039m going through. I don&#039t know that I&#039ll ever be able to thank him enough for being my academic mentor and friend. Sometimes I forget how lucky I am.